5 ms·

This comes up every now and then. I'm really not sure there is as much NIMBYism in SF relative to other cities as many people believe. By the way, by "not rea

by geebee 13y ago

This comes up every now and then. I'm really not sure there is as much NIMBYism in SF relative to other cities as many people believe. By the way, by "not really sure", I mean not really sure. I just view it as more of an open question than many people here on HN do. Here's where I'm coming from - SF is small, old, and largely built. It's in the middle of a very large metropolitan area, but it includes many of the old parts that have had high population densities for a long time. Contrast that with the population densities of most American cities, and the general land area. With the exception of New York, SF much smaller and more densely populated than almost all of the regions used in these comparisons. Now, when someone builds a large housing development far from the urban center of, say, Houston, that counts as development for Houston. When this happens in Walnut Creek, it goes down as not developing in SF. So the way I'd answer this question - and I haven't yet - is to look at subregions in major met regions in the US that have had a population density of above 17,000/sq mi for more than 50 years, and try to measure how much development has occurred within those areas in the last 20 years, or what kind of opposition to new development happens in those regions now. My refutable hypothesis is that SF will no longer show a dramatically different pattern of NIMBYism from those sub-regions outside San Francisco. That doesn't mean it won't show NIMBYism, or that it won't show more NIMBYism than other old, relatively dense regions - I just think that it may reveal that "population density over 17000/sq mi for more than several decades" correlates with general opposition to new construction regardless of whether it happens in SF. Like I said, I haven't checked, it's just an idea. This would actually take some work to investigate.

TDL 13y ago
So we should simply ask another question. If I buy a city block in S.F. can I a build a 40 story high rise to accommodate the growing population? The assumption being that I can buy the city block & it's in near other high rises.
hapless 13y ago
SF has a very low density. It's less dense than LA. If you want to compare it to NYC, it's less dense than the NYC suburbs in NJ and Queens. Rebuilding at higher densities is definitely practical, they just choose not to do so.
- NoPiece 13y ago
  San Francisco is twice is dense as Los Angeles. 17,620/sq mi vs 8,225/sq mi. New York is the only city of a s similar size or larger that is more dense than Sn Francisco. San Francisco is more dense than Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_francisco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_francisco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_angeles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_angeles The Bay Area as a whole is less dense than the LA Metropolitan area.
  - bradleyjg 13y ago
    That's just a historical accident of municipal lines. For whatever reason San Francisco didn't incorporate its inner suburbs while those other cities did. SF isn't functionally similarly to NYC or Chicago, it's more like Manhattan or the Central + North side. Both are considerably denser. It's true that the Bay Area as a whole needs to get denser, but SF proper needs to lead the way.
    - geebee 13y ago
      Correct - that's the basis of my thesis. That "SF" isn't necessarily more NIMBYistic than sub-regions of other cities that have had "high" (say, 15,000 residents/sq mi or more) density for an extended period of time. If those other areas had experienced a similar historical accident of municipal lines (ie, only those parts of a Chicago that have exceeded 15,000+ residents per square mile since the 1950s were considered "Chicago"), the thesis is that SF and those sub regions wouldn't show on average dramatically different levels of opposition to new development. I guess another phrase this thesis is that SF's apparant NIMBYism is a misleading artifact of what you describe as a "historical accident of municipal lines." This distortion, of course, can make SF look good as well as bad. You can pump SF up by talking about the ratio of <desirableculturalfactor>:Resident compared to Houston, or Chicago, or LA, conveniently ignoring the fact that in Chicago, the residential suburbs are counted, whereas in SF, they aren't. My guess is that this ratio in LA or Chicago's densest 48 square miles would look quite similar to SF. Or, alternatively, you can make SF look bad by excluding the sort of developments that favor the burbs (such as percentage of households with children - when a family moves from SF to Redwood City, SF "loses" a family - in many areas, this would just be considered a move within the region). Good or bad, my thesis is that these differences are largely an artifact of how the borders are drawn, rather than innate cultural differences between SF and other metropolitan areas. I don't doubt that these cultural difference exist (and they may in fact be driven by the fact that the electorate in SF isn't diluted by the votes in the surrounding areas), but I think they may be greatly overstated.

by geebee 13y ago

TDL 13y ago

So we should simply ask another question. If I buy a city block in S.F. can I a build a 40 story high rise to accommodate the growing population? The assumption being that I can buy the city block & it's in near other high rises.

hapless 13y ago

SF has a very low density. It's less dense than LA. If you want to compare it to NYC, it's less dense than the NYC suburbs in NJ and Queens. Rebuilding at higher densities is definitely practical, they just choose not to do so.

NoPiece 13y ago
San Francisco is twice is dense as Los Angeles. 17,620/sq mi vs 8,225/sq mi. New York is the only city of a s similar size or larger that is more dense than Sn Francisco. San Francisco is more dense than Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_francisco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_francisco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_angeles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_angeles The Bay Area as a whole is less dense than the LA Metropolitan area.
- bradleyjg 13y ago
  That's just a historical accident of municipal lines. For whatever reason San Francisco didn't incorporate its inner suburbs while those other cities did. SF isn't functionally similarly to NYC or Chicago, it's more like Manhattan or the Central + North side. Both are considerably denser. It's true that the Bay Area as a whole needs to get denser, but SF proper needs to lead the way.
  - geebee 13y ago
    Correct - that's the basis of my thesis. That "SF" isn't necessarily more NIMBYistic than sub-regions of other cities that have had "high" (say, 15,000 residents/sq mi or more) density for an extended period of time. If those other areas had experienced a similar historical accident of municipal lines (ie, only those parts of a Chicago that have exceeded 15,000+ residents per square mile since the 1950s were considered "Chicago"), the thesis is that SF and those sub regions wouldn't show on average dramatically different levels of opposition to new development. I guess another phrase this thesis is that SF's apparant NIMBYism is a misleading artifact of what you describe as a "historical accident of municipal lines." This distortion, of course, can make SF look good as well as bad. You can pump SF up by talking about the ratio of <desirableculturalfactor>:Resident compared to Houston, or Chicago, or LA, conveniently ignoring the fact that in Chicago, the residential suburbs are counted, whereas in SF, they aren't. My guess is that this ratio in LA or Chicago's densest 48 square miles would look quite similar to SF. Or, alternatively, you can make SF look bad by excluding the sort of developments that favor the burbs (such as percentage of households with children - when a family moves from SF to Redwood City, SF "loses" a family - in many areas, this would just be considered a move within the region). Good or bad, my thesis is that these differences are largely an artifact of how the borders are drawn, rather than innate cultural differences between SF and other metropolitan areas. I don't doubt that these cultural difference exist (and they may in fact be driven by the fact that the electorate in SF isn't diluted by the votes in the surrounding areas), but I think they may be greatly overstated.